Buying and scratching instant lottery tickets is one area that just about everyone has done at one time or another. For some folks it's probably something they do too often. I guess for me, the bad buying habit is junk food. If I had spent my extra money on instant lottery tickets throughout the years, I may have been rich by now as opposed to overweight. Like anything, whether it's food or gambling you have to do it in moderation, and that is often hard to do.

Here within the state of Pennsylvania where I live, the first scratch off ticket came out in 1975, and they are already a big hit every since.

I have bought instant lottery tickets of every available price range in my state. I usually buy the $1 - $2 tickets, but once in awhile I buy a $5 - $10 ticket, and one time, I purchased a $20 instant ticket. I won nothing on the $20 ticket, not even $1 or perhaps a FREE ticket, so that was like throwing away my $20. You would believe that with having to spend that much money, they might give everybody at least a no cost $1 ticket or something. I thought afterwards that I was sort of foolish for spending and losing the $20 on one ticket, but heck since they say, "If you do not play, you can not win !", it was a gamble, and I did not win that time. I have known two people that each won near twenty thousand dollars on instant lottery tickets. So I can say for sure, "yes, some folks do win it big."

Unlike the live lottery which is usually drawn by picking numbers, trusted lotto dealers the instant lottery is pre-determined months in front of it's release. The tickets are designed and printed, then they are distributed to the lottery retailers throughout the state. Most small convenience stores offer instant lottery tickets, as well as the large chain stores. You can usually find them in a vending machine with multiple styles and price ranges to choose from, or they're at the cashiers area on the counter or behind a shielded section. Instant lottery tickets sell for as low as $1 and all the way to $20 each in most states of the u.s. but some states may have tickets that sell for much more than $20 each.

States do instant lotteries to help fund numerous programs. By way of example in Pennsylvania, the lottery is used to generate funds to benefit programs for the Commonwealth's older residents. In Ohio, since 1974, the Lottery has provided more than $13 billion to public education. Annually, the lottery provides about 4.5% of the funding needed for Ohio's public education. In Missouri, approximately 27.3 cents of every dollar spent on the Lottery benefits curriculum; 61.6 cents goes back to players as prizes, 5 cents is utilized for administrative costs and 6.1 cents goes to retailers within the form of commissions, incentives and bonuses. In all, more than 93 cents of every dollar stays in Missouri. It's different for every state, although the lottery can be very beneficial regardless of the few problems it may cause to some, within the form of gambling addictions.

Most folks buy instant (scratch off) tickets, and should they do not win anything, they throw the tickets in the trash. Did you know that every time you throw a losing instant lottery ticket within the trash, you are throwing money away ? Yes, you'll find literally hundreds if not thousands of folks around the globe that could love to buy your tickets from you. I have seen losing lottery tickets sell for all the way to $15 each, these were tickets that had no redeemable value. I once went to a local convenience store and asked them if I could have a bag of losing instant lottery tickets I saw they had on the floor behind the counter. The clerk gladly gave them to me, I took the tickets home and after checking through them all, I found two which were $1 winners that were not redeemed, and I sold the remaining losing tickets for $30, as well as the store was just going to throw them away.

Where did I sell them ? On eBay. I happened to look one day and I noticed there was losing instant lottery tickets for sale on the eBay auction website. You can find folks selling non-winning, so called 'worthless' lottery tickets on eBay all of the time. I just did a search now while writing this article, and I found over 100 different auction listings for them. Who buys these non-winning lottery tickets ? Collectors.

Instant Lottery Ticket collecting is fast being a big thing. You can find groups and people all around the world, that love collecting lottery tickets. There are various websites, discussion groups and forums now just for lottery ticket collecting. In fact there is even a brand new term or name for an instant lottery ticket collector: LOTOLOGIST, and the instant lottery ticket collecting hobby is called: LOTOLOGY. To determine how big this hobby is becoming just visit your favorite search engine, such as GOOGLE, and do a search for: lotologist OR lotology. And you will find many sites collecting, selling and buying used non-winning instant lottery tickets.